Artist-In-Residence: Mokha Laget

IN RESIDENCE: MAY 6, 2024 – MAY 31, 2024

Dee Ann McIntyre in Memory of Scotty McIntyre Artist Studio

Mokha Laget, the third recipient of the artist-in-residence program at the New Mexico Museum of Art Vladem Contemporary, is a New Mexico-based interdisciplinary artist known for her geometric abstractions on shaped canvas and visual scores. A passionate colorist, Mokha was born in North Africa, a region of radiant light and dramatic geographical contrasts. Inspired by science, architecture and music encountered in her studies and travel, her work explores the “gentle chaos” of perceptual psychology through spatial and sonic perspective.

Laget’s paintings reject the traditional square format, constructed instead with shaped canvases to present her compositions. Resembling familiar yet unrecognizable architectural spaces, these ambiguous shapes create an illusory 3D environment facilitated by enigmatic perspective and light sources. With a keen interest in the psychology of human perception, Laget orchestrates a geometric choreography wherein space is simultaneously implied physicality and energetic force. In doing so, she also engages with a particularly salient question concerning our relationship with truth. “On the one hand, the painting’s formal geometry implies a kind of mathematical order, yet it is also inherently about illusions and uncertainty.” she states.

During her residency, Mokha Laget will be exploring a visual interpretation of the new architecture of the Vladem Contemporary building, designed by DNCA + StudioGP with Devendra Contractor as Lead Architect.

Her work also extends to the graphic representation of visual scores which like conventional scores can be interpreted musically. “This series relates to my interest in the historical and interdisciplinary overlap between music and architecture.” Working with several collaborators, her works have been exhibited, projected, and performed over the last 5 years. Laget plans to host several collaborative experimental music performances in Santa Fe during her May residency.

Initially trained in old master’s techniques in the south of France, she then studied Fine Arts at the Corcoran College of Art and Design (BFA) in Washington DC. She also holds a degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in simultaneous interpreting and translation and has spent much of the past 25 years traveling parts of Africa, Latin America, and Asia. She has exhibited consistently for the past 35 years both nationally and internationally and is represented in numerous museum collections. In 2019, she received a Pollock Krasner Foundation award and in 2023, she was invited as a Visiting Artist to the American Academy in Rome. A 10-year survey exhibition of her work opened at the American University Museum in Washington D.C. in 2022.

This article and image are from the New Mexico Museum of Art's website.